The Wall(19)

On the last evening I finally managed to get Hifa to go off on her own with me, by sidling up to her, raising my eyebrows and asking, ‘Walk?’ And just like that we set off down the hill from our camp. We walked down and around a col, then up to the top of a long valley and stood looking back down at the view. We were across the far side of the bowl of hills from where we were camping and we could just see the pub. There was a final-night feeling, that back-to-school, back-to-reality vibe which you always get in the moments before you set off home at the end of a successful holiday. I thought: this is my moment to say something. Or maybe, don’t say anything, just make my move? Hifa was panting slightly from the exertion of walking the last stretch uphill, her hair pulled back by her knitted cap, her skin flushed, her lips full and pink.

‘When I grow up I’m going to be rich enough to have Help,’ Hifa said, not forcefully but as if she was daydreaming. And just like that I felt my moment go. She had said something which I’d been thinking, but felt was too private to say. Wanting to have Help was on my secret wish list, or had been, and this experience did nothing to change that. If anything it made it seem more desirable. I had thought that Help was a status symbol, a technique for signalling that you’re rich. But the thing I learnt that week was how much nicer life could be if you had somebody else to do all the boring and difficult bits for you. Having Help was like having a life upgrade. I also realised this was one of the differences between me and Hifa. Because she didn’t think she’d ever be rich enough to have Help, she felt free to talk about it, disguised as a joke. Because I thought I would one day be rich enough, because my whole sense of myself was that I was going to be the kind of person who was rich enough, I’d never make a joke about it. That would be giving away real information about who I was and what I wanted.

‘Time to go back, the sun’s about to go down,’ she said, turning from the view. I could lunge? No, too late, too desperate. I had missed my chance. I also thought, wow, it’s funny how I don’t really know anything about you.

The last morning came: back to reality. We packed, and headed off to the train station to make the trip to the Wall. Our packs, which had felt light on the way to the holiday, were heavy as we set out on the return journey. We’d spent the whole week talking and arguing and joshing, but we were quiet on the train. I was still brooding on the issue of Help when we said goodbye at the big terminus in London. There was something I’d been thinking about that week. I’d never really thought about Help before, either having it or being it, and the linked question of what their lives had been like before and after the Change, and the journeys they had made to get here, and how they had got over the Wall, and what it had been like to be among the Others and now to be Help. I could just about imagine burning sand, a huge yellow sun close overhead, salt water stinging in cuts, the weak being left behind, the bitter tastes of exile and loss, the longing for safety, the incandescent desperation and grief driving you onwards … no, I couldn’t really imagine. And yet here they were.

I don’t know why the thing I wanted to know felt like an awkward question, but it did, and I’d been storing up my nerve to ask. At the station, the Help were leaving us to go to their next assignment. As we Defenders had agreed, I took the cook aside for a moment to thank him and slip him an envelope with a tip for him and his partner – you aren’t supposed to do that, but we thought it was the right thing. He took it with an inclination of his head. The only time I’d seen him smile, or even change expression, was on the last couple of days of the holiday, when he was cooking with Mary. This was my last chance. The station was busy and crowded, which created a sense of intimacy around our talk: we couldn’t be overheard.

‘I have something I wanted to ask,’ I said. The Help was a thin man, economical in movement, and whenever you spoke to him he stayed impassive, his hands by his sides. ‘What happened to the world, we here have a name for it, we call it the Change. But what I’ve been wondering is what other people call it, if there’s a word for the same thing, or if it’s just something that happened. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but is there a word for the Change, what we call the Change, in your language?’

‘Coo-ee-shee-a,’ I thought he said. I didn’t know if I’d heard that correctly and had no idea what it meant, but there was something in his eyes that stopped me from asking more. He picked up his bag and he walked off with his partner, not saying goodbye and not looking back.

We went to the safe deposit office and picked up the precious cargo we’d left there before heading north: our communicators. Hifa kissed hers before turning it on and said, ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

I wanted to look at my communicator in private. I put it in my pocket and waited until the others had started off for our train back to the Wall. The station was still frantic, mainly with commuters rushing home: it was one of those moments when you remember just how much life there is away from yours, away from being a Defender. All these people had homes, pay packets, families, hobbies, taxes to pay, things on their mind, TV series to catch up with, heating bills, gardens to plant. I had none of those things; maybe one day I would. At the moment I didn’t particularly want them. It was odd: I wanted to get off the Wall, I wanted this time to be over, yet when I tried to think hard about what would be next, there was a blank.

I switched on my communicator. There were lots of messages but before I looked at them I went onto the net to look something up: coo-ee-shee-a. I didn’t get it right first time because I spelt it wrong, but on the third attempt I found what I was looking for. Kuishia is a Swahili word. It means ‘the ending’.